Arkansas-Based Air Force Programs Complete Successful Review

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The Department of Electrical Engineering recently had a successful program review with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The University of Arkansas Department of Electrical Engineering hosted a successful Air Force program annual review meeting on Jan. 23. The purpose of the meeting was to examine the progress of several Arkansas-based research projects sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Gernot Pomrenke, the program manager from the office, began the meeting by introducing the research projects under the Air Force Office of Scientific Research optoelectronics portfolio.

Shui-Qing "Fisher" Yu, associate professor of electrical engineering, gave an overview of several novel optoelectronic projects at the University of Arkansas, and explained how this research could be tied into a bigger vision of material science and engineering research at the University of Arkansas.

Yu continued with a report on the progress made by his research group on use of silicon-based germanium tin, or SiGeSn, in material and device development in the past year.  This included the demonstration of world-record high-performance lasers for future high speed optical interconnect and detectors to be used for future low cost infrared camera.

Baohua Li, chief executive officer of Arktonics, an Arkansas-based high-tech start-up, presented the company's progress on the epitaxial technologies for SiGeSn high performance optoelectronics devices. Arktonics is funded by the Air Force under the Small Business Innovation Research program. Arktonics partners with the University of Arkansas and ASM America Inc. on material and device researches.

Mansour Mortazavi, professor of physics, and Wei Du, research scientist, from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff also reported the progress on their projects. Hugh Churchill, assistant professor of physics at the University of Arkansas and a recent awardee of AFOSR Young Investigator Program, gave a talk of his awarded work on 2D semiconductor quantum devices.

After the meeting, Pomrenke visited faculty labs and toured the Nanoscale Material Science and Engineering Building. 

"It was good to have some time to get an extensive overview of the progress in your current projects and also to get an overview of some of your other interests, activities, and vision," said Pomrenke. "I was quite pleased with the quality of presentations and of course the excellent facilities that are available to researchers at the University of Arkansas."

Other representatives from the University of Arkansas College of Engineering included Heather Nachtmann, associate dean for research, Juan Balda, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Greg Salamo, director of the Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering, Hameed Naseem, professor of electrical engineering, Samir El-Ghazaly, distinguished professor of electrical engineering, Zhong Chen, and Morgan Ware, both assistant professors of electrical engineering.